


Let's Stick Together

by the_problem_with_stardust, yamyamyam



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avenger Bucky Barnes, Avengers Movie Night, Avengers Tower, Ceiling Vent Clint Barton, Cryo is not a good time, Dorks in Love, Dr. Cho has had it with you people, Jarvis is the boss of everyone, M/M, Mutual Pining, Protective Clint Barton, So much stationery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-29 11:22:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20081377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_problem_with_stardust/pseuds/the_problem_with_stardust, https://archiveofourown.org/users/yamyamyam/pseuds/yamyamyam
Summary: Bucky's had a rough year to begin with, and now Steve is out of commission for who knows how long.Clint is pretty sure he can solve this with post-it notes.





	Let's Stick Together

**Author's Note:**

> words by yamyamyam  
awesome art by the_problem_with_stardust
> 
> Part of the Winterhawk RBB 2019!

====

Bucky isn't sure what kicked it off, or maybe there wasn't a reason in the first place. It was one of those "with any luck, I'll never find out" kind of things. Bucky has had enough trouble in his life; he doesn't need to borrow more. So there are a lot of things about Steve's friends that he carefully does not investigate.

They're Steve's friends, still, not his, except maybe Natalia, and that's... that's its own can of worms. He's been living and working with them for months now, but there's still that distance. Bucky remembers making friends so easily, once upon a time. That part of him is quiet now, the puzzle pieces that interlock with other people worn away to smooth edges that slide past them. Quiet is okay, though. He still has Steve, and Steve does friendship like he does everything else: at 300% intensity. 

Anyway, this week Hawkeye—one of the Hawkeyes? Christ this place is confusing. This week _Clint_ is in some kind of stationery war against Tony, or maybe against the concept of undecorated flat surfaces? It seems to piss Tony off, in any case. The robots who scuttle around tidying things have begun to multiply, their assigned routes broadening to encompass whatever weird new place Clint had started putting taunting post-it notes. The fridge door. The ceiling. The branches of houseplants. The bland yet expensive artwork. The lockers in the quinjets. _Inside all of the toilet bowls in Tony's penthouse._

This is how Bucky learns of the existence of Extreme Post-It Notes. Truly, the future is a world of marvels.

Tony finally cracks on the day Dum-E serves him a smoothie made of ice and Post-It Notes. He suits up and gives furious chase to a Clint who keeps having to stop running because he's laughing so hard. 

On the back of the Ironman suit is a Post-It note saying "kick me."

Pepper calls a cessation of hostilities with an impressively straight face. Tony, pouting manfully, stands down his repulsor beams and sulkily goes back to his workshop. Clint solemnly (...sort of) swears not to put any more notes on _Tony's_ stuff.

In retrospect, Bucky should have noticed how specific that promise was.

=====

An hour after the cease-fire is called, there's a call to assemble, and all thoughts of sticky notes fall by the wayside. Eighteen hours after that they're back home, variously covered in corrosive goo, construction debris, and bruises. Clint's nose is broken, again, which Bucky finds oddly soothing. He feels a bit guilty about it, but Clint's face just looks... weird, without a bandage on a newly-set nose. 

But it's Steve, not Clint, who takes up the most time in the clinic. Bucky has gone back to their floor and showered and changed before realizing that Steve hadn't beat him there. Frowning, he asks JARVIS for Steve's location, then returns to the clinic, puzzled. Steve looked fine after the mission, his injuries healed before the jet landed, if he'd even collected any in the first place. Maybe he's giving Clint a talking to about jumping off buildings without a full business plan? It's never worked before, but Steve has never been one to give up.

But instead, Bucky finds Steve sitting up on a gurney, tapping the fingers of one hand impatiently while a nurse collects blood from his other arm.

"Hey, slow-poke."

Steve wrinkles his nose. "Believe me, as soon as the doc comes back, I'm out of here so fast the camera won't show me leaving."

Right, the... camera. He's been living in the tower for six months as an Avenger now and Bucky still hasn't quite internalized the ubiquity of JARVIS's surveillance. Benign surveillance. Probably. He can't find it in himself to be properly paranoid about it either, though. After 70 years of his body being owned and micromanaged by fucking nazis, the thought that a robot might see him in the shower doesn't feel as intrusive as it might otherwise. Even if it was Tony's robot.

He shakes his head and sits on the bed, gripping Steve's ankle and looking at him pointedly until he stops glaring at the nurse. Steve turns red, sheepish. "Sorry," he mumbles. The nurse rolls her eyes. "Whatever, at least you stay in the room when I ask, unlike _some_ Avengers." She finishes her eighth vial and puts an Ironman bandaid on his arm. 

Steve looks at the bandaid.

Bucky looks at the bandaid.

They crack up. 

"Can I go now?" 

The nurse purses her lips. "Dr. Nayar wants you to stay put until the results come back."

"Can't I just... go upstairs and he can call me?"

"Nope."

Steve doesn't quite growl. The nurse doesn't quite care.

When she's gone, Bucky goes for distracting. "I bet they've just got a new doc impressed by the oldest blood he's ever seen."

"Yours is older."

"Yeah? How come I don't have any grey hair, huh?"

"Neither do I!"

"Oh no?" Bucky reaches over and plucks a strand of grey from Steve's head and waves it in his face. "And there's more where that came from, buddy. Stressful week? Kids on your lawn?"

Steve glares at him.

Bucky grins. "How about a couple rounds of gin." He pulls a deck of cards out of a drawer next to the bed, which also contains a colouring book and crayons, a nintendo DS, and... a pair of handcuffs? That's new. Clint must be stepping up his clinic-avoidance game.

Steve sighs heavily, but starts shuffling the cards.

=====

It's four hours later that Dr. Nayar finally shows up, and the reason for the delay is immediately evident when they see who he's brought with him.

Steve straightens up, dropping his hand of cards. "Dr. Cho! I thought you were in Korea."

Cho looks offended by Steve's alertness. "I was." 

Steve blinks.

Dr. Cho comes all the way in and sits down next to the bed. "They called me in as, how did Tony put it, the world expert on weird-ass superman medical stuff."

"Your lab results were... atypical," puts in Dr. Nayar. "I thought a second opinion would be—"

"Just spit it out, son, I don't have all day." Steve was done with this hours ago. Bucky is a little surprised there isn't a Steve-shaped hole in the wall and an empty bed. Maybe he _is_ getting old.

Dr. Cho answers instead, sounding wearier than jet lag can account for. "Your aging has sped up to match your metabolism, Captain. If we don't intervene, you'll be dead within ten years, and unfit for duty long before that. And that's assuming the rate doesn't keep increasing."

Bucky chokes. Ten years? Steve is maybe 30 going by years out of the ice, and looks even younger. Doesn't he? Bucky looks back at Steve's little patch of grey hair with fresh alarm. 

Steve sets his jaw. "So we'll intervene. What's the fix?"

"We don't have one."

"What about your cradle—"

"Maybe eventually, but I need time, and you don't have it."

Steve looks frustrated. "Then what—"

"I want to put you in cryogenic stasis."

Steve looks haunted for a moment, then puts his Stern And Heroic face back on. "You want to freeze me?"

Oh. Oh, Stevie. 

Dr. Cho, apologetic, nods. "Until we find out what's causing this and how to reverse it, I don't see another option."

Bucky reaches out to squeeze Steve's shoulder. "Hey, it's not so bad. The Wakandan cryo setup... you're asleep before you even feel the cold. It won't be like the ice." He tries to sound convincing, not very successfully. Cryo, Jesus Christ. It's a testament to how off-balance Steve is that he doesn't call him out on his limp attempt at reassurance.

Steve takes in a deep breath, lets it out. "Can't I just keep working until you fix it? It's just some hair right now. I feel fine."

Dr. Cho looks pained. "What if we find a way to stop it, but not reverse it? You'll lose 5 years of your life for every one you spend now. Or more! We don't know!"

Steve looks her in the eye. "And what if you never find a way to stop it? I can't just stay on hold forever. So I age faster. In this line of work, it's not like I'm going to live forever any—"

"Steve. Don't," Bucky hears himself say.

"Buck?"

"Don't throw away your life like this." Shit, and when has that line ever worked on Steven Grant Suicidal Idiot Rogers?

"Bucky, every time I get you back, something tears us apart. I'm sick of it. I'm not doing this." He moves to get up and Bucky puts a hand on his chest, stopping him.

"I'm sick of it too, asshole. But that doesn't mean I want you to die so we can catch up on netflix together ASAP. I'll still be here when you come out. _My_ serum still has me on slow-motion." He looks over at team MD. "Uh, right? Do we know that?"

Dr. Nayar nods.

"Besides, with all the brains in this building, how long can it take?"

"Buck—"

"What if you come out every three months. Get an update on how the cure is going. Spend a couple days with us. And if the world is ending without you, WHICH IT WON'T BE, you can change your mind then if you have to." He glances over at Cho. "I mean, if that's okay with you, doc?"

"Absolutely."

"What do you say, Steve?"

"I still don't—"

"Don't make me watch you die," Bucky blurts out, staring furiously down at his hand on Steve's chest. 

Steve goes pale.

Bucky looks up, stubborn. "That's what it would be."

Steve swallows back whatever he'd been about to say. "Okay. Okay. I'll do it." 

"Yeah?" Bucky's voice cracks a little.

"I guess I know a little something about what it's like to watch your best friend die."

A heavy silence falls. 

"Well hey, and if they hadn't frozen me then, where would we be now?" Bucky tries to smile.

Steve tries to smile back.

Dr. Cho looks between them, then breathes out a sigh of relief. "Good. That's settled. Let's get started."

Steve looks panicked. "Right now?"

"The sooner we do it, the sooner I get started on finding you an answer," she replies. 

Stern-And-Heroic-Face Steve is back, and he nods. His eyes are pure 1935 Steve in the hospital, though, desperate for escape. Bucky reaches over to squeeze his hand. "This ain't us calling the priest, you hear?" he whispers. "This is temporary."

Steve squeezes back and lets out a big breath. "What do I have to do?"

=====

Bucky holds his hand while the super-strength sedative puts him under, watches as he's transferred to a cryo tube, even holds it together for the whole walk to the elevator afterwards. It's not until he gets to the floor he shares with Steve that he starts to lose it.

Cryo. It had to be cryo.

It's always the cold, one way or another, that breaks them apart. The January day that Bucky got his draft notice. The frozen ravine in the alps. The icy resting place of the Valkyrie. A dozen Hydra cryochambers. The Wakandan cryo tube, when he was still a loaded weapon in the hands of anyone with the right words. Now that they're up to number six in the series, "coincidence" doesn't seem to cover it any more. What frosty bastard is writing their script, anyway?

He's getting maudlin. Get it together, Barnes. 

Screw it. He's got three months to get it together for Steve. Unless Dr. Cho figures something out sooner, and then he won't have to. He sits down heavily on the couch and moves to take off his boots.

Tucked in to his shoelaces is a sticky note.

=====

The note just has a drawing of crosshairs. When the hell did someone get close enough to put this _in his shoe_?

But shit, the sticky note has a good point. Shooting something does sound pretty good right about now.

=====

He was hoping to find the range empty, and almost turns around when he sees it's not. Clint catches him first, though, bounding up like a labrador retriever.

"You made it!"

"I... guess so?"

"You got my note!"

Bucky frowns. "About that, how—"

"You were. Uh. Kinda distracted? In the clinic."

Well, that's true. But there's distracted and there's distracted. Bucky has stayed awake for 96 hours in a hide only to shoot his target on a second's notice. He has way more than earned his boy scout Alertness badge. How did he not notice Clint fucking around with his goddamn boots _while he was wearing them?_

...Clint's still talking, isn't he. Fuck, Bucky IS distracted.

"...thought you might like to, you know, destroy the hell out of some targets."

"Yeah, that... that sounds..."

"And get your ass beat by my superior marksmanship."

Oh it's ON NOW.

=====

Clint beats him with pistols, he beats Clint with rifles. Three hours go by before he knows it. Clint proposes a rematch with bow and arrow. 

"Hell, no."

"What, you scared of a little palaeolithic weapons technology?"

Bucky snorts. "I'm not wearing enough spandex to take on The Amazing Hawkeye and his trick arrows."

"Hey, I don't wear spandex."

"Anymore."

"Anymore," agrees Clint. "Wait."

"Nat showed me your old circus posters."

Clint clutches his chest. "BETRAYAL!"

Bucky doesn't giggle. Taciturn super-soldiers feared the world over don't giggle.

Clint is rolling on the floor, hand over his eyes, bemoaning ever having met the back-stabbing Black Widow, discloser of terrible wardrobe choices—

Okay, Bucky giggles.

Clint grins and hops up.

"So I uh, I should head back up. Put away Steve's..." Bucky trails off. Put Steve's stuff away for the next three months. Fuck. Steve never even got back to the apartment after the mission. Bucky's going to wind up doing sadness laundry.

"Or..." Clint fishes around in a pocket on his bow case, then slaps Bucky on the shoulder companionably. When he takes his hand away, there's a neon orange note stuck to Bucky's metal arm. It has a little drawing of a cup and says COFFEE TIME.

Bucky raises an eyebrow at Clint.

Clint raises both his eyebrows and throws in a pair of finger guns.

Bucky doesn't giggle. He doesn't.

JARVIS has the coffee brewed and ready by the time they get to the common floor.

=====

After that, Post-It notes start appearing everywhere he turns. Inside his armoured vest, between his couch cushions, on the underside of his orange juice carton, wrapped around clips for his preferred weapons at the range. It's not like it's a big mystery where they come from, but just in case it was, half of them have archery-related doodles on them, a quarter have pizza or coffee or both, and the ones that just have writing are all in the same terrible handwriting as his COFFEE TIME sticky note. 

Bucky keeps them all. He has his own little office in their cavernous apartment—for what? No one asks him to do paperwork. Maybe there's paperwork he's supposed to be doing but no one wanted to tell the Winter Soldier to fill something out in triplicate? Asking might result in actually having to do paperwork, so this too is something Bucky carefully does not investigate. Bucky's no fool; he was a _sergeant._ But anyway, it means that there are unused bulletin boards in his unused office, and slowly they become a sort of shrine to 3-M. In the centre of one he pins up a picture of Steve, and then slowly fills in all the empty space around it with the notes Clint has left him on cheerful little squares of paper in garish colours. 

And it's... nice. Everything else in the apartment reminds him that Steve is missing, that Steve is gone for months or maybe years, and that Bucky has to pretend to be happy about it or else Steve will do something stupid, and—it's just nice. To have something to look at that... isn't about that. Every new note makes the picture of Steve a little bit less of a punch to the gut, and a little bit more like wiggling a loose tooth. Tender but temporary.

It's nice.

=====

He catches Clint at it, one night. He's lying awake after a nightmare, or maybe he never got to sleep in the first place, his sleep is so terrible lately that he's not sure. Suddenly he hears a loud crash, and then "Fuck!" and then something breaking. Bucky races in to the living room, gun in one hand, knife in the other, pants in absolutely no hands, only to find Clint hopelessly tangled up in a wrestling match with a houseplant. Bucky is wearing boxers, a murderous expression, and nothing else, but still manages to keep the upper hand in the battle for Most Dignified, because it quickly becomes evident that Clint is _losing_ the wrestling match. 

Bucky safeties his gun and tries not to smile. "Clint. Leave my succulent alone. It's sensitive."

Clint shrieks.

Bucky rolls his eyes. "Sorry, did I scare you while you were _breaking in to my apartment?_"

"Bucky! Uh! Hi! This isn't what it looks like!"

"No? It looks like you..." Bucky takes in the scene for a moment, and holding back a snicker is getting _really_ hard. "...fell out of a ceiling vent head-first, on to my cactus, rolled off it on to my snake plant, dropped thirty post-it notes, and came to a stop in the jade plant you are currently making out with."

"Uh. It uh. Okay it is what it looks like."

Bucky feels like he's supposed to be angry here, but this is _hilarious_ and he can't stop laughing now that he's started. 

Clint sticks his tongue out at Bucky. 

Bucky masters his amusement, with difficulty, and some hospitable algorithm drilled in to him by his mother wakes up. "So you want some coffee, or what?"

"Oh god yes."

After draining his cup of coffee and pouring himself another, Clint looks up. "Sorry about the..." He waves vaguely at the shattered pottery, potting soil, and sad toppled succulents. The sole undamaged plant has a purple sticky-note tacked to its pot. 

Bucky squints. "Is that a tropical island?"

"Yeah! I thought like, plants don't get to... go out much... so maybe it would like... a vacation?"

Bucky looks at Clint, hard, a crease appearing between his eyebrows.

Clint looks nervous. "What? What's wrong?"

"There's... really just one of you in the whole wide world, Clint."

"Thanks!" Clint pauses. "Right? That was good?"

"Zero yous wouldn't be enough," Bucky allows.

Clint beams.

"Two of you, however, would be absolute nightmare fodder."

Clint beams some more. Bucky decides to abandon this line of conversation. "So. You. My ceiling. Creepy infiltration. You wanna... expand on that?"

"Aw, shit, was it creepy?"

"You broke in to my living room. Yes. That's... Look, I know I was out of the world for a long time, but I'm pretty sure that's still creepy in this century." 

"Aw, shit, I'm sorry. I wanted to cheer you up. But I'm not... good with... talking. About feelings. And stuff. So I... But I know you... I mean, Steve..." Clint scrubs his hand through his hair, incidentally adding more potting soil to his already dishevelled coif. "God, I'm saying this all wrong. Here."

Clint produces a sharpie and a cube of Post-It notes from somewhere, and starts drawing, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth in concentration. It's adorable.

Adorable? Where did that come from?

It... really kind of is, though. 

Clint has four notes lined up now, and clears his throat. He flips over the first one to reveal a little stick figure archer. He smiles hugely, then dramatically frowns and mouths OH NO as he turns the note so the archer is now upside down, and then crumples it up and sets it next to sticky note #2, which is revealed to be a plant in a pot. 

He flips over note #3: OOPS.

Bucky takes the pen and writes "WHY?" on a new note, pointing to the note with one hand and the ceiling vent, grille still hanging askew, with the other. He underlines WHY? for good measure.

Clint sticks out a finger in an Aha! gesture, smiles, and flips over his fourth note: a steaming cup of coffee.

Bucky looks up, puzzled. Clint points back at the note and draws a big circle with a line through it over top of the coffee.

"Lack of coffee? Really? That's what you're going with?"

"I'm really impaired without caffeine. Like, so much."

"Uh huh. And when was your last cup of coffee before this."

"Uh." Clint puts his hand on the back of his neck, looking anywhere but at Bucky. "Half an hour ago," he mumbles.

Bucky takes out a new note and writes "WOW."

Clint smiles sheepishly up at Bucky. "Okay, it wasn't the coffee. I just... you looked so sad. And it made me feel. Bad. And I thought this would... well I didn't plan to _fall_, I was just going to _decorate_, see, and then you'd--"

Bucky covers Clint's mouth with his metal hand. He sighs, unable to keep a fond expression off his face.

"Tell you what. You promise not to infiltrate my living room like an enemy compound, and I'll make some more... uh..." Bucky draws a little coffee pot on a purple sticky note. Apparently this is how they communicate now.

Clint perks up, shocked and pleased, looking like he just dodged a prison sentence. What the hell did he think Bucky was going to do? Actually, maybe he shouldn't think about that too hard. There are a lot of things Bucky has done to people in real life that are considerably worse than prison. Maybe assuming he's John Wick For Houseplants isn't totally off base.

"And we could, uh, watch a movie or something?" But not John Wick.

"Yeah? Really?" Clint is at least 50% excited puppy at this point. Bucky thinks maybe offering to make more coffee was a tactical error, but too late now. Plus it's kind of cute. More than kind of cute.

"Yeah, I'm not sleepy anyway." That's one way to describe it, at least. _I've already screamed enough for one night_ would perhaps be more accurate, but that's maybe a bit too much of a truth bomb for the remedial midnight gardening society's first meeting.

"Deal."

Clint commandeers the remote and so they watch Disney's Robin Hood, which Bucky has not seen, and then Errol Flynn's Robin Hood, which he has, when it came out in '38. Dawn is thinking hard about going to work by then, and a yawning Bucky shoos Clint out of the apartment—through the door this time. He looks over at the pile of Explosive Garden Decompression Clint left behind and decides to deal with it later.

He sleeps soundly and dreamlessly for the first time in... he can't remember. A while. A long while.

Huh. How about that.

=====

Clint keeps his promise about not dropping in through the ceiling, at least as far as Bucky can tell. He puts a "DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT" note inside each of the ceiling vents as extra insurance, just in case. 

Clint steps up his note game to make up for it, though, to the point where Bucky feels kind of disappointed if there's not at least one on his apartment door when he gets up in the morning. Targets and arrows appear when Clint is heading down to the range. Coffee & pizza notes mean he's waiting in the common room, or at least close enough to appear as soon as the scent of coffee hits the room. Clint discovers that Jarvis can be made to display virtual sticky notes almost anywhere in the tower, and starts sending Bucky animated gifs that way. Clint is a sticky note artiste, pushing the boundaries of avant-garde light-adhesive stationery as a medium. At least, according to him.

And somehow every time Bucky wakes up in the middle of the night from another nightmare or flashback or even just a normal sleep only to find the apartment a little too empty, Clint appears at the door. He doesn't knock, but "accidentally" makes a ton of noise as he puts up a note, so that Bucky has an excuse to come open the door and complain, then reluctantly (not reluctantly) invite him in for coffee and a movie. Or two. Sometimes he falls asleep and wakes up alone on the couch, tucked snugly under a blanket, with a GOOD MORNING sticky note on his left arm. Or his face. Better: sometimes Clint falls asleep first, gradually slipping sideways until he's drooling on Bucky's shoulder, and Bucky lets his head lean down to nestle against Clint's, and listens to him breathe until it soothes him in to sleep as well.

You know, normal bro stuff.

Eventually he realizes JARVIS must be ratting him out, but by then he's admitted to himself that he doesn't want it to stop.

He fills up one bulletin board entirely with notes and starts in on a second. He looks at the picture of Steve in the centre of the first one, and hmms thoughtfully, then asks JARVIS to print him out a picture of Clint to go on the second.

=====

The weeks pass, and Steve's first awakening looms on the horizon. Bucky almost manages to forget until the sticky notes start counting down. He doesn't sleep at all the night of the ONLY ONE DAY LEFT note. Clint just shows up at midnight like it was an appointment and they watch terrible horror movies until morning. THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES. TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA. They make it through 30 minutes of THE DEADLY MANTIS before Bucky vetoes it as unsalvageable with any amount of popcorn, and they switch to THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, which has considerably fewer references to the Cold War. 

The movie ends and Netflix stares at him judgmentally. 

"I should head down, I guess."

Clint stirs from his blanket nest on the floor next to Bucky's leg. "You guess? Aren't you excited to see him?"

"I am! I am. I'm just... nervous, I guess."

Clint grips his shin with a firm hand in reassurance. "Hey, it's just Steve. What's the worst that can happen?"

"It's not... I'm worried that he won't be willing to go back under. I'm not exactly in a position to convince anyone that cryo-sleep is a good time."

"Hey, you managed last time." Right. He'd forgotten that Clint must have seen that while planting the first note of their long, sticky correspondence in Bucky's bootlaces.

"And that was a miracle. Now I've been missing him for 3 months and I'm not sure I can sell it again." Bucky scrubs his face in his hands and sighs heavily. "Well, he definitely won't do it if I skip seeing him. I'd better go. Wish me luck."

Clint stands up with him, claps him warmly on the shoulder. "You don't need it. You've got this." 

Bucky quirks a half-smile. "Appreciate the vote of confidence."

It's not until the elevator door opens on the clinic floor that he notices the GOOD LUCK note stuck to his arm. Damnit, Clint.

But he's smiling as he peels it off.

=====

Steve is already awake when Bucky gets there, and he finds he's a little relieved. The Wakandan cryo tech really is pretty slick, but he's got a lifetime of freezer-burn trauma that's probably better left unexamined.

"Hey, Buck!" Steve waves from where he is sitting up on a gurney, doing his best to ignore an irritated phlebotomist who is trying to draw blood. 

"Steve." He's still shivering a little when Bucky embraces him. Bucky hopes his dismay at this doesn't show in his face; he hides it with an unimpressed look as he grabs one of Steve's arms and holds it out for the phlebotomist, who mutters "THANK YOU" as she tries to set a land speed record for venipuncture before Steve's arm escapes. 

"So what'd I miss?"

"Not much. Some AIM guys being jerks. A Hydra cell in Mississippi. You should be happy you missed that one, I think there's still swamp slime in my jacket."

Steve looks dour for a moment. He's probably upset he missed enduring the swamp slime of duty, knowing him. "Seriously, nothing much. How are you doing? Feeling okay?"

"Cryo is... weird. I feel like it's been two minutes but also like it's been years."

"God, tell me about it."

Steve flushes. "Oh. Yeah. I guess you'd... know all about that."

Oops. Cryo 1, Salesman Bucky 0. He plasters on a big fake reassuring smile and Steve narrows his eyes in suspicion. 

He's saved from trying to recover his sales pitch by the entrance of Doctor Cho, who surprises them with good news.

"So! We found out what's sped up your personal clock."

"Wait, really? Why didn't you wake me up sooner?"

Doctor Cho gives him a long, quelling look. "Because I can't fix it yet, Captain." Her eyebrows dare him to complain. Bucky could have told her that was a bad idea; Steve's never turned down a dare in his life. 

"What's the hold-up?"

She looks at the ceiling, perhaps hoping JARVIS will lend her the strength to deal with her mulish patient. 

Bucky interjects more gently: "So what was the cause?"

"A virus. A very specific virus. Someone who knows a lot about how your body works tailored this to you. Sergeant Barnes is also infected, actually, it just doesn't have any effect on him."

"I am?" Bucky is a little thrown by this. "Did I... give it to Steve?"

"You are, Mr. Wilson is, and Ms. Romanoff is. It doesn't seem to be a contagion risk; we've narrowed the exposure down to one of two missions you were all on, where the four of you had broken skin but your colleagues did not."

Steve frowns harder. "Why didn't we notice it then?"

Dr. Cho directs a withering look at Steve. "Because it would take dozens of biochemists working full time to screen you for unspecified pathogens every time you scrape your usually invulnerable knee. If you even bothered to disclose injuries that minor to us."

Steve wilts a bit. "Oh."

She sighs longsufferingly. "Good news is, we should be able to synthesize a monoclonal antibody treatment in relatively short order. Six months or less."

"Six months? That's—" Steve catches the look in Cho's eye, and revises whatever he was about to say. "...That's very expeditious, thank you ma'am."

She eyes him for a minute and seems to decide to take that at face value. "I want you back in cryo as soon as possible, though. Your current rate of aging is up 20% from when you were last awake. I don't want to chance a further increase, not when we're so close to a fix."

Steve swallows, taking this in, clearly not happy about it.

"Stevie, I—"

"I know, Buck. You don't have to tell me. I'm going." Huh. That was easy.

Steve cracks a wistful smile. "I'm a little less suicidal than in 1945, what can I say. I got my best pal back, makes a guy want to stick around."

"Oh yeah? Anyone I know?" 

Steve flicks him on the shoulder. "Nope."

"You're not so bad either, you chump."

"It's pronounced champ, Buck."

=====

Within an hour Steve is squared away in the cold again. It's Bucky who's shivering, though. He wanders in to the elevator, lost in thought. After a long moment of silence, the elevator starts moving, opening on... what floor is this? Bucky steps out, just as a door opens. Clint. This is Clint's floor. 

"Hey Bucky!"

"Clint. Uh. I didn't mean to... JARVIS just..."

"You're welcome, sir," says JARVIS's voice from the ceiling. 

Bucky's not sure what face he makes at this, but apparently it's amusing.

Clint grins. "Just let it go, he's the boss of all of us and he knows it."

"Hmm."

"Come in?"

Bucky blinks. "You know what. Sure."

=====

"He's already back under? Wow. See, I told you you didn't need luck."

"It wasn't me, it was Doctor Cho. She glared at him and he agreed right away. God, I wish I had ten of her in the war. Or hell, in the thirties. So many fistfights could have been avoided." 

Clint laughs as he pours himself a coffee, then stops when he looks up and catches sight of Bucky's face, jaw tense and trembling and trying not to show it. "Oh, hey. Are you okay? You don't look real... happy about this."

"I'm fine. I'm happy. This is good. This is what I wanted."

Clint looks unconvinced. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Bucky's voice doesn't quite crack, but it's wobblier than he'd like.

Clint steps closer, right in to Bucky's space. "Really?" he asks softly.

Bucky lets his forehead drop down to Clint's shoulder. "No," he whispers. "I'm really, really not okay."

Clint puts an arm around Bucky and starts rubbing slow circles on his back. "Hey. You don't have to be."

"I know that he's gonna be fine. I know he IS fine. I just. I just hate that it has to be cryo." Bucky takes a wet breath in and laughs a bit hysterically. "Christ, sorry, I'm getting your shirt all wet." He stands back, and makes to go for the door. Clint catches his arm.

"Want to go shoot some stuff?"

"Oh my god, yes."

=====

After the range, Bucky is feeling a bit better. The elevator bypasses Clint's floor this time, going straight to Bucky & Steve's place. Clint doesn't remark on it, just heads straight in and starts browsing movies. 

Bucky hangs back in the corridor for a moment, looking up at the ceiling with consternation. He looks back down at his feet, then back up again, and says "Thanks, JARVIS" in a tiny voice. 

A holographic sticky note appears in front of him. "Of course, sir." is printed on it in exquisite faux handwriting.

"Everyone's a comedian," mutters Bucky, and walks in to the apartment.

=====

It's a few nights later when Clint turns off the movie halfway through and gets up to tuck a blanket over a sleeping Bucky, only to have Bucky stir and grasp his arm as he's about to stick a note on him on his way out.

"Stay?"

Clint blinks owlishly, as if not sure that really happened. Hell, _Bucky_ can't quite believe he said it out loud. He starts to sit up.

"Sorry. Sorry. I—"

Clint sticks the note over his mouth to shut him up. "Would you like that?" he asks, eyes still so wide, but looking hopeful, not dismayed.

Bucky swallows and peels the note off his face, flicking it to the floor unread. He stares, caught in Clint's eyes for a long moment. "Yeah. Yeah I would."

Clint brushes Bucky's hair back from his forehead. "You got it." He presses a chaste kiss to his forehead and wanders off.

Bucky sits all the way up. The hell?

But Clint has just gone down the hall to Bucky's bedroom. He sticks his head out of the doorway. "You coming? That couch is way too small."

Bucky is coming. He falls asleep nestled in Clint's armpit and dreams only good things. 

The next night he doesn't even need to ask.

=====

It takes two months, not six, for the big brains to synthesize the cure. Bucky privately suspects the raw irritation of having her cradle research disrupted for something as mundane as synthesizing a miracle cure has spurred Dr. Cho to this speedy resolution. But who cares why; he feels like a huge weight has been lifted from him at the thought that Steve's next awakening won't be followed by another instalment of winter. 

The actual treatment is pretty anticlimactic: one injection. 

"That's it?" Steve asks.

Dr. Cho raises an eyebrow. "Why, did you want to hang around here longer?" 

"Nope! No ma'am! I'm good!"

"No missions for a week. And I want to see you back in a week for a second dose and a confirmatory blood test."

"You got it, doc."

She looks suspiciously at Steve and turns to Bucky. "Sergeant, he's not going on any missions for a week."

"He sure as hell isn't."

Steve makes a sad puppy face at Bucky. "Aw, c'mon!"

"That face didn't work in the 30s and it's not working now, pal."

Steve looks between Cho and Bucky and sighs, then puts his pout back in storage. "Oh, FINE."

"See to it!" Dr. Cho makes an "I'm watching you" gesture on her way out the door.

"God, she reminds me of your ma, Steve."

Steve shakes his head, smiling. "They're definitely in the same union."

"Sass-busters local 409."

"Something like that."

"So, I guess you get to keep the hair." Bucky plucks out another grey hair from Steve's scalp.

"Ow! Not if you keep pulling it out."

Bucky grins.

Steve harrumphs. "Besides, I think it looks... distinguished. Commanderly."

"You just keep telling yourself that, old man."

=====

The apartment feels alive again in a way it hasn't in weeks; Clint has been good company—great company—but Steve is larger than life and takes up space in a way no one else can. They stay up late chatting, and Bucky goes to bed with a smile on his face. He waits up a bit for a knock on the door, but falls asleep before it comes.

=====

After the third night of sleeping alone, he extracts a blank note from the drifts of paper that have accumulated from Clint's presence over the months, and fills it in. After dinner, he heads down to Clint's floor and knocks on the door.

Clint, dressed in a bathrobe and holding a slice of pizza, answers it, looking surprised. "Bucky? What are—"

Bucky sticks the note on Clint's chest.

I MISS YOU

Clint looks down at the note and back up, confused. "But... isn't Steve back?"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"You don't... Steve's back, you don't need me any more."

Bucky pinches the bridge of his nose. "Jesus wept. Clint. You're not a substitute teacher. I can have more than one friend, y'know."

"..." says Clint, articulately.

Bucky looks up, suddenly nervous. "Unless... you don't want to hang out any more?"

"What? No! No! I mean yeah! I mean I do! Want to. Hang out. I just thought—"

"Well stop thinking. You're awful at it."

Clint grimaces. "I've been told." 

Oh, honey. 

"You gonna invite me in, or what?"

Clint opens the door wider and gestures grandiosely toward the living room, then seems to realize something and races ahead to turn off the TV. Not quite quickly enough.

Bucky suppresses a grin. "Aw, were you eating pizza in your underwear and watching Hoarders?"

"You can't prove anything."

Bucky takes a piece of Sadness Pizza and starts eating it, glancing at the aforementioned underwear pointedly.

Clint pulls his bathrobe closed a little too late for plausible deniability. "Okay, I maybe missed you too," he mumbles.

"What? What was that? I didn't quite catch that." 

"Jerk."

Bucky grins and plops down on the sofa. "Movie night?"

"Hell yeah, movie night!"

=====

The sharks have defeated the anacondas, Earth safe but for how long, and the credits are starting when Bucky leans in close to Clint's ear. "You were _kind of_ right about the friend thing. I don't want to be your friend," he says softly.

Clint whips his head around, dismayed. "Oh! Oh, I... Sorry." He starts to stand up, only to find a metal hand gripping his shoulder, pushing him back down to the couch.

Bucky looks at him earnestly. "I mean, not just your friend." 

Clint looks blank for a moment. Shit, was Bucky reading this wrong? But they've been literally sleeping together for weeks, that's... I mean they hadn't talked about it, but that's, that's more than friendly, right? God, Bucky can remember being so smooth before the war, but apparently—

Enlightenment strikes Clint suddenly. "OH! Ohhh." Clint's mouth is still trying to remember how consonants work, but his face is very eloquently saying it opened the prize in the Cracker Jack and found a hundred-dollar bill.

Bucky trails a finger softly over his cheek. "Yeah. Oh." Clint captures the hand in both of his and kisses Bucky's fingertips, then leans in to kiss his lips.

Which is how Bucky discovers that archers are _delicious_. 

Admittedly, Bucky does really like pizza.

Bucky pulls back long enough to kiss the bandage on Clint's nose—gently; it's a new injury. Again. Tony really needs to make him a bionic nose or some purple nose armour or something. He keeps kissing, moving to his cheek, his jaw, his neck, his—

Somewhere around "neck" Clint's leg flails out and knocks the coffee table over. Lucky materializes from the corner he was sleeping soundly in and starts in on the pizza, now that it's on the floor and therefore his. Bucky unsuccessfully tries to hold in a laugh.

"You are a disaster," he cackles.

Clint makes a sad puppy face. 

"A very handsome disaster?" Bucky amends.

Clint looks sadder. "A handsome disaster with _no more pizza._" 

Bucky leans in close. "It turns out I don't just like you for your pizza."

Clint gasps, making an over-the-top shocked expression. Bucky rolls his eyes and kisses it off his face. Bucky is... really in to this new technique for getting Clint to shut up.

He kisses Clint's neck again, and this time it's Clint's arm that flails out, knocking over a lamp.

"Wow. Neck's kinda dangerous, huh."

Clint turns pink. "I'm ticklish! It's not a crime." His pink face turns pale suddenly. "YOU CAN NEVER TELL NATASHA."

Bucky laughs. "You gonna make it worth my while?"

Clint smiles smugly. "You have no idea." He pauses. "But uh. Maybe in my bedroom? There's less... uh... that I can knock over there."

"Sold." Bucky stands up and scoops Clint up before he can stand, carrying him down the hall.

"Hey!" Clint looks mutinous. Or aroused. Maybe both.

Bucky raises an eyebrow. "What? I didn't want to risk more property damage on the way."

"...if you say so," says Clint, voice husky. Okay, both. Definitely both. Bucky can work with this.

Bucky wades through the bedroom, neatly side-stepping the various piles of laundry, comic books, arrows, dog toys, and... whatever that thing is. He dumps Clint on the bed. 

"Uh. Sorry about the mess."

"Clint. It's okay. I've met you."

"I should—"

Bucky rolls his eyes. "Tell you what. You have 60 seconds to tidy up. If you must."

Clint scrambles off the bed and then stops, looking around, option paralysis setting in in the face of a target-rich environment. Bucky strips out of his clothes, neatly folding them and setting them in an unoccupied square of carpet. A total of thirteen seconds have elapsed and Clint still hasn't decided where to start his tidying when Bucky picks him up again and dumps him back on the bed. 

"That wasn't 60 seconds!"

Bucky climbs on to the bed, caging Clint in his arms, looking down at him with a predatory smile. "I lied. I'm a terrible person." He nips at Clint's neck and is rewarded with a high-pitched squeak.

"You ARE a terrible person."

"Well I _am_ still wanted in about 30 countries. Not this one, though."

"That's not true. I want you in this country." Clint threads his fingers through Bucky's hair and draws his head in close. "I really, really want you."

"That's a relief. This..." Bucky grinds his hips against Clint, pressing their cocks together "...would be pretty awkward if you didn't."

Clint is done with words now. Words are hard and so is Clint and nnnngh Bucky feels nice. Very, very nice. "Muh," he explains.

Bucky grins and sits back, sliding Clint's ratty Hoarders-marathon-watching boxers off, bathrobe already lost somewhere in the hall. He leans forward again. His left arm makes a buzzy servo noise and locks in place, supporting Bucky's weight over Clint. Clint's eyes go wide and dark at this. He looks like he might word about it if he could still word. Bucky gathers their cocks with his free hand, just holding them for a moment.

"This okay?" 

"Unh!"

"Uh. That a yes?"

Clint unhs vehemently and wraps his own hand around Bucky's and squeezes it. Okay, that was a yes. Bucky starts stroking, Clint's thumb brushing over his hand encouragingly. Clint makes some more vowel sounds. Bucky leans down and sucks a mark over Clint's collarbone. Clint has decided on the letter A and AAAAAAAs for dear life. 

Bucky bites his lower lip and drops his forehead to Clint's shoulder. "Mm. I'm not... gonna last long, sweetheart. You make me so..." Clint is on the same wavelength: he finishes Bucky's sentence by coming, hard and sudden and close, his hand drifting away helplessly, his face a study in wonder. Bucky, eyes wide, is hot on his heels, spilling on to his hand and Clint's cock and Clint's abs, oh hello Clint's abs, unnnnnh. Unh is _definitely_ a yes tonight.

Spent, Bucky rolls his left shoulder to unlock his arm and pushes off. Clint is grinning dazedly, staring up at him, or maybe through him, it's hard to tell; he's not entirely back on planet Earth yet. Bucky gets a washcloth from the bathroom to clean up with, and a warm, wet cloth on his dick finally penetrates Clint's post-coital fog. 

"Unh, c'mere." He makes grabby hands at Bucky's face. Bucky leans closer, indulgently. Clint kisses him, only sort of hitting his lips. Bucky smothers a laugh. "C'mon, I thought you never missed."

"I don't. Thas intention'l." he replies vaguely. "BUCKY. That was... That... Well that happened." 

This guy. Bucky can't believe he was worried about not being smooth enough earlier. His mouth crinkles. "It sure did, baby doll."

"I want it to that happened again." Grammar is job three at best on Clint's to-do list at the moment.

Smiling, Bucky tucks himself in to Clint's armpit, snaking his metal arm under the pillow, and idly running his right hand over Clint's chest. "Mm, I think that can be arranged. But maybe in the morning? You look—" He trails off; Clint doesn't just look sleepy, he's out cold. Bucky huffs a laugh and settles in to join him. Round two can wait until the morning; right now sleeping curled around Clint sounds like the best idea anyone's ever had. They've been sleeping together like this for months, but it's new again tonight, burnished bright, lit from within. Bucky drifts off to the steady beat of Clint's heart.

=====

When he wakes up, Clint doesn't seem to have moved at all in the night; Bucky is still tucked in close to his side. But stuck on Bucky's forehead is a neon pink sticky-note with a drawing of a heart pierced by an arrow. He peels it off and presses a kiss to a sleeping Clint's temple, and whispers a promise:

"I love you too, you dork."

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first ever bang! It was a blast working with the_problem_with_stardust, I had so much fun incorporating all the sticky notes. Big thanks to the mods for organizing this event!
> 
> =====
> 
> I'm on [twitter,](https://twitter.com/yamtimesthree) yellin' about Bucky usually.


End file.
